We pay by the rules, says Google boss

THE head of Google in Britain has defended it against political attacks on foreign companies trying to cheat the system through tax practices.

Matt Brittin said it was up to politicians to legislate if they wanted to force change as he fought back against suggestions that multinationals were ''immoral''.

The issue is also a hot topic in Australia, with Google, Apple and other high-tech companies coming under fire for paying low taxes.

Mr Brittin said that while he did not mind the ''belligerent'' grilling he had received from MPs on the UK's Public Accounts Committee two weeks ago, the public debate was creating the view that all businesses were ''trying to do negative things'' and get away with it. ''It's the wrong bias to think everyone is out to cheat,'' he said. ''I find it frustrating when we're criticised, because I'm not immoral and neither is Google.

''If Google were immoral, I would not be working here. I'm proud of the way we operate.''

Mr Brittin, who rowed for Britain in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, was lambasted by the accounts committee for Google's low tax contributions, along with the bosses of Starbucks and Amazon.

Google paid just £6 million ($A9 billion) in corporation tax on £2.5 billion of UK revenues in 2011.

At the hearing Margaret Hodge, chairman of the PAC, said: ''We are not accusing you of being illegal. We are accusing you of being immoral.''

But Mr Brittin said MPs were blaming companies for a system that they had designed. ''Google plays by the rules set by politicians,'' he said. ''The only people who really have choices are politicians who set the tax rates.''

Insisting that Google pays its tax in America, Mr Brittin said: ''I would love it if Google had been invented in Cambridge. If Google had been created there and was a British business we'd be having a very different conversation now.''

An executive at the Morrisons supermarket chain became the latest retail heavyweight in the UK to call on the government to force foreign firms to pay more tax.

Richard Pennycook, its finance director, told Sky's Jeff Randall Live: ''We want a level playing field. What applies to one company should apply to another. There are big differentials in what companies are paying.''

Meanwhile, French ministers signalled they wanted to force online companies to pay full levies on earnings made in France.